Iranian leaders yesterday brushed off the threat of sanctions or military attack over their controversial nuclear drive, insisting the West was powerless to halt the Islamic republic.
The tough rhetoric came after the regime dismissed appeals from the UN's atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei to freeze its uranium enrichment program and calm suspicions it is seeking the bomb.
"Today, thank God, the Iranian nation is a powerful one and we are going to have a dialogue with the world from a position of power," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northeast of the country.
"Everything we have is from God, and a few weaklings cannot stand against the Iranian people," he said.
ElBaradei's trip to Tehran on Thursday came in the wake of Iran's announcement that its scientists had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, despite a UN Security Council demand for the work to be halted by April 28.
Iran says it only wants to generate atomic energy, but enrichment can be extended to make the fissile core of a nuclear warhead. ElBaradei said talks on the demand would continue, although Iran was showing no sign of any readiness to compromise.
Top regime cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in a sermon that the US was a "decaying power" and added that Iran was "not Iraq or Afghanistan."
"The enemy should know Iran is not comparable to any country in the world. Now we are much more powerful than before," said the head of Iran's Guardian Council, a powerful political watchdog.
"Don't be intimidated by their threats. They don't have the stamina to do anything," Jannati said.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for UN Security Council action and highlighted part of the UN charter that allows sanctions to escalate into military action.
"There is no doubt that Iran continues to defy the will of the international community," Rice said. "When the Security Council reconvenes, there will have to be some consequence for that action."
She suggested chapter seven of the UN Charter, which sets out specific action that can be taken when there is a threat to international peace or an act of aggression.
"One thing the Security Council has, and the IAEA does not have, is the ability to compel, through chapter seven resolutions, member states of the UN to obey the will of the international system," Rice said.
"And I'm certain that we'll look at measures that could be taken to ensure that Iran knows that they really have no choice but to comply," she said.
The US chief diplomat did not specifically call for any particular measure. US leaders this week said that reports of planned military action were "wild speculation."
But chapter seven allows for a gradual increase of international pressure, up to military action.
"There is no doubt that Iran has continued salami-slicing tactics -- a little bit here, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more -- despite the fact that the international community has said very clearly, `Stop,'" Rice said.
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